Sweeps Week Murders

By Malachi Stone

An ambitious prosecutor falls for a seductive defendant. When TV cable news finds out the truth, it's the end of life as he knew it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Malachi Stone
• Release date: Dec 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005184292

Malachi Stone

Marlon Brando on Larry King Live quoted an unknown Louisiana woman who said, "Anybody who shows his face in public is an ass." (1) Mindful of those wise words, I created the pseudonym Malachi Stone to author my novels and short stories because, as a practicing attorney in a conservative community, my natural inclination was and still is to avoid notoriety and controversy wherever and whenever possible. That being said, my secret identity affords me a perverse Zorro-like gratification. I've been writing for more than twenty years. For a three-year period I was represented by a fine literary agent (2) in Manhattan, who tried valiantly but without success to place my novels in traditional publishing. Allegedly, objections were raised to negative protagonists and explicit sex. While I am convinced those objections are groundless, I am weary of arguing the point. I'll simply let you, the readers, decide for yourselves. I have garnered many good reviews over the years. See, for example, Elizabeth White (3). Interviews of me may be found on the web, for instance, Steve Weddle, Fiona "McDroll" Johnson, Paul D. Brazill and Ian Ayres (4-7). Please feel free to post reviews of my work, good, bad, or indifferent. Only be sure to remember that most of my books, especially the later ones, are self-published without the dubious benefit of copyediting, content editing or censorship of any kind. So if you post reviews carping about bad language or finding flaws in punctuation, paragraphing or font, I frankly don't care. I'm putting these books out there for the sole reason I wrote them in the first place - to be enjoyed by readers. As my law practice has become more active recently, I have taken a sabbatical from writing but hope to resume soon. My personal and private email is: [e-mail]. I'd be delighted to hear from you!1. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0308/02/lklw.00.html2. http://variety.com/exec/stacia-decker/3. http://www.elizabethawhite.com/tag/malachi-stone/4. http://www.spinetinglermag.com/2011/04/20/conversations-with-the-bookless-malachi-stone/5. http://imeanttoreadthat.blogspot.com/2012/01/american-banshee-by-malachi-stone.html#!/2012/01/american-banshee-by-malachi-stone.html6. https://pauldbrazill.com/2012/01/19/short-sharp-interview-malachi-stone/7. http://nigelpbird.blogspot.com/2010/09/dancing-with-myself-malachi-stone.html

Book preview

SWEEPS WEEK MURDERS

A novel by Malachi Stone

Eighth Edition

©2023 by Malachi Stone

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 as amended, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the author constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property.

Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

All the characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental. All the characters in this book are over eighteen years of age.

If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contact with the author of this work at: [e-mail].

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

For Maria, my true Proverbs 31 woman

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CONNECT WITH ME ONLINE

I am fully aware that the State of Illinois has abolished the death penalty. I am also cognizant of the fact that Illinois law does not authorize televised trials other than through a pilot program in certain selected counties. I’m working the fiction street here.

CHAPTER ONE

Susan Kennicott with easy grace and faultless elegance graduated magna cum laude from Bryn Mawr in late spring, sporting dual majors in romance languages and medieval literature. After commencement she summered at the Sorbonne. It was during that madcap Juillet in Paris while sunning herself one après-midi over a leisurely Pernod in a quiet sidewalk café along the rive gauche that she looked up from her Proust to first encounter the grizzled countenance of her bientôt-à-est mari Victor Sloan: sexagenarian scion of the Midwest Media empire, arch-conservative, international industrial pirate, more rapacious than any of his moneyed forebears, rumored billionaire, and founder of The Justice Society. His intense slate eyes shimmering in reflection like black olives in her drink told her at once that he meant to have her.

Inevitably, the happy pair soon wed. A select circle of the couple’s closest and dearest friends—new friends to Susan, mostly Victor’s friends and predominantly members of The Justice Society—fêted their union aboard Victor Sloan’s private yacht The Fairly Balanced, anchored in the calm vermilion waters of Gustavia Harbor off St. Bart’s. Nature obliged by providing a spectacular August sunset for a background tapestry. All agreed that it proved the perfect setting for the exchange of nuptial vows.

Later that evening, scandalously abandoning their guests, the new bride and groom leaped overboard and swam to a deserted islet where they made love on the warm white moonlit sand. Victor despite his age swam like the former Olympic champion he was. Brenda Red Keane, sixtyish acting secretary-treasurer of The Justice Society, had remarked to Susan that he reminded her of an aging Buster Crabbe. Susan, slightly unsteady from the cocktails—or maybe she simply hadn’t yet gotten her sea legs—had asked her who in the hell was Buster Crabbe, anyway, and everyone had laughed.

Victor and Susan circumaviated the globe on his Lear Jet The Peregrine that summer, taking in six of the seven continents, with stopovers in Sydney, Cairo, the Isle of Crete and points west. The honeymoon pilgrimage drifted into early autumn. The pair climbed Aztec pyramids, hiked back to Victoria Falls, parasailed high above flame-orange sandstone cliffs off the Western Cape, and snorkeled the coral canyons and undersea caves of turquoise Antiguan bays. They danced all night in Rio, rode rickshaws through the cobblestone streets of old Beijing, skied under the stars down the volcanic peaks of Kamchatka, and shared a romantic late-night candlelit dinner served on the veranda of a French colonial villa overlooking Hanoi, where the clink of their champagne glasses raised in a toast to each others’ happiness heralded a spectacular midnight fireworks display. Back in the States at last, the couple settled into cozy married life in Victor’s secluded mansion tucked away in a wooded glen, yet within easy limousine commute from his empire’s flagship television station.

One early February evening, wearied by the stress of presiding over a particularly contentious county board meeting, Brenda Red Keane stopped into a liquor store four blocks from the courthouse looking for a bottle of twelve-year-old scotch. Despite the lateness of the hour, the store clerk was occupied serving another patron. That patron, whom Brenda would later characterize as nondescript yet chilling clutched the grip of a large-caliber revolver, the business end of which was securely lodged in the liquor store clerk’s mouth like an unwelcome thermometer—an exploding thermometer that propelled chunks of the unfortunate clerk’s skull, blood and brain tissue in an aerosol mist, tagging the premium liquor rack behind him. In what she would later describe as instinctive action, Red reached into her purse and drew out the .38 special snub nose pistol she as a county official was licensed to carry, aimed and fired, killing the masked perpetrator instantly with a single shot through the heart.

The first police officer responding to the scene peeled away the perp’s ski mask to reveal the newly reposed face of Susan Kennicott Sloan.

All of which inspired the joke going around King Castle County Courthouse the morning after:

What do you give the woman who has everything?

An autopsy.

When I showed up at my office that morning, exhausted from working late the night before, Chief Assistant Public Defender Rollo T. Jambon lounged in my desk chair like a beached walrus, only I figured instead of sockeye salmon he was sniffing around for a continuance on the Lackland Scopes murder case. Even though the defendant Krystal Noah persisted in protesting her innocence—loudly and often—from the confines of her jail cell and had passed a police polygraph, he was more convinced of his client’s guilt than I was.

Rollie exhaled as though his doctor had told him to. It was an exhale of resignation. Wonder how long The Big Red One’s been in the Glass Chamber this morning.

Brenda Keene’s parked in Cow’s office? Probably party politicking.

You’re putting me on. What, you don’t follow the news?

Doctor’s orders.

Sit down, Cato, Rollie began with evident relish. Despite your physician-imposed journalistic aversion, you are no doubt familiar with Victor Sloan, are you not? Victor Sloan and his lovely trophy wife Susan Kennicott Sloan, she of the high-toned charity circuit and uncrowned empress of King Castle County’s well-heeled horsy set? Susan Kennicott Sloan: Victor Sloan’s prize mount?

I’ve heard those names before.

You’ve heard those names before. But have you heard what our little filly Susan was in the act of doing last night when some high-profile public-spirited citizen shot her right out of the saddle?

What are you talking about, Rollie?

I’m talking about that unsuspected markswoman, that Republican sharpshooter vigilante herself: Madame County Board Chairperson Brenda Keane. Down in the bailiffs’ lounge they’ve already started calling her Deadeye.

Red Keane, what, shot Susan Sloan? That’s what you’re telling me?

Colder than last year’s Democratic primary returns. Coroner says a single shot, right between those adorable galloping breasts and through the left ventricle. CPR would have been an exercise in futility. Susan Kennicott Sloan has chased her last steeple.

But why? Where? When?

There, you see? Your barely-repressed hunger for news bursts forth in your invoking three of the Five Ws. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

Then let’s start with why.

Motive? Always an excellent point of departure. You sure you haven’t been taking that Famous Prosecutors correspondence course at night?

Why would Brenda want to kill Victor Sloan’s wife?

Jealousy? Envy? I guess lust is out of the question. Pride? Greed? Anger?

You forgot sloth and gluttony. As soon as I said the final words, I regretted them.

Touché. However, they don’t apply here. No, there is no motive, because there is no crime. The smart money is on justifiable homicide.

Justifiable homicide?

Interrupting a forcible felony in progress. Preventing a fleeing forcible felon from making good her escape. Take your pick.

Who’s the felon? Not Susan Sloan.

None other. Caught in the act of sticking up the Top Hat Liquor Store on Court and Madison. You think maybe she forgot her platinum charge card in her Gucci riding togs and needed to pick up a magnum of Dom Perignon and a tin of Beluga on the way home? And then there’s the ski mask. Rather a fetching one, I’m told. Could be she was testing it out for the slopes at Vail?

Susan Sloan was attempting an armed robbery at Top Hat Liquors?

Attempting and succeeding. Up to a point. A thirty-eight special one hundred-ten grain jacketed hollow point, actually. That’s what brings La Roja to the Glass Chamber this morning.

Bob Cow, Victor Sloan, and Red Keane are like the Three Musketeers. Those friendships go back for decades, maybe even to childhood. There’ll have to be a special prosecutor appointed on this one.

Or maybe Cow will simply delegate the investigation to his workhorse first assistant. Rollie’s black hair, slicked straight back with a prodigal excess of mousse, shone like a mirror in the fluorescent light. Saves the county money that way.

I collapsed into a chair. Rollie must have sensed my apprehension. Who do you think might be appointed special pross in the extremely unlikely event Cow and company fail to sweep this one under the rug?

I don’t know, I said. It’d be career suicide—a thankless job, frankly. Maybe Cow will try and keep it in-office. If so, I’m elected. Every dirty thankless job seems to float my way these days like a turd in a wading pool.

Rollie nodded. Bet you never thought it would come to this, back when you were sweating those first-year exams in law school, did you, Thaddeus? Living on peanut butter sandwiches and grapefruit tang? Contracts, Torts, Civil Procedure. Frick and Frack form a partnership. Gratuitous bailments. Promissory estoppel. The Erie Doctrine. I mean, come on. Why does a capable guy like yourself stick with law enforcement after all these years, anyway? I hear there’s an opening at Top Hat Liquors you might want to consider.

‘I cannot dig, and I am too proud to beg.’

Rollie’s moon face brightened. Hey, Luke Sixteen: the dishonest steward parable, one of my own personal favorites. One can tell you teach Sunday school—you sure know your Bible.

The intercom sounded. It was Cow. Rollie raised one hand like a traffic cop, signaling our meeting was adjourned. He then began a familiar perseverating motion, struggling to right himself from his seated position. I hurried to Cow’s office.

Robert Cow, duly elected State’s Attorney of King Castle County, Illinois, was the kind of guy who, after I’d worked for him twenty years, still had his secretary Jackie leave me little pink telephone message slips telling me to call him at home the moment I got in to the office. It proved more effective than any time clock, and it still spiked my blood pressure every morning. Every time the subject of hypertension came up, Cow’s reply was that, in his opinion, most stress is self-induced.

Cow’s office was not quite as plush as the Illinois governor’s, but close. Heavy floor-to-ceiling glass doors opened onto indigo carpeting like walking through a field of violets, indirect-lit walnut panels, and Jackie herself, looking like a late-sixties Playmate-of-the-Year gone all woman-executive. Today Jackie wore a coffin-silk black dress as though in early mourning for the late Susan Sloan. Her blonde Sandra Dee bubble hairdo glowed like a vintage magazine ad for Lustre-Creme shampoo.

He’s waiting for you, she said with fake warmth in a voice made dusky by decades of cigarettes.

I don’t know why Cow chose to have hair at all; his bullet head was perpetually shorn nearly bald from weekly visits to George Wife’s. Cow could have done the job himself in under five minutes with a Wahl clipper and a one-eighth inch attachment, but George Wife’s represented the main oasis along the trade route of local gossip. Some barber shops specialized in pro ball talk, fishing talk, or hunting talk. At George Wife’s, the talk was all local government intrigue. Anything heard at George Wife’s spread like a venereal disease through the nerve system of the King Castle County courthouse.

I found Cow staring out the window onto the courthouse square, hands behind his back, rocking on his heels. I suppose you’ve heard the news, he said. There’s been a shooting. Very sensitive matter. Very sensitive.

How’s Ms. Keane taking it?

Red? About the way you’d expect her to take it. How does one react hours after killing the wife of one’s longtime friend? Emily Post doesn’t have a chapter on that. We’re covering new ground here.

And Victor Sloan?

I was about to call Vic. But first you and I need to get a few things straight, Taddy.

I flinched. Go ahead.

Early word down at George Wife’s is that I’ll be forced to move to appoint a special prosecutor to handle this investigation. Your thoughts, please?

Technically, aren’t you jumping the gun? There’s no formal cause or proceeding yet, is there? I mean, the thing just happened.

No, my political friendship with Red and my ties to the party may be enough for my enemies to cry cover-up if I don’t file a petition.

Then let’s file one this morning.

He frowned. Wrong answer. Once a special pross is appointed, the thing is totally out of our hands and in the newspapers every night. A protracted investigation would kill Victor Sloan. No, there must be some other appropriate course of action. What is it?

I hesitated. What if we were to file our petition, set it in front of a sympathetic judge, and lose it?

Cow turned, beaming. Then I could assign the whole mess to you, to coordinate the investigation in-office. It will all be handled quietly, with your typical skill and discretion. What might have been a major embarrassment to the party and to this office will have been averted. Excellent analysis, Thaddeus. Excellent analysis.

But which judge?

Cow rubbed his thumb against the back of his fresh-shaven neck. How about Little Greggy?

Circuit Judge Krikor Vartanian was no friend to the State’s Attorney’s office. The diminutive Armenian-American judge’s prickly personality and unpredictable rulings had managed to make him an enemy of the Chief Judge as well. Despite Vartanian’s high rank as Circuit Judge, the Chief Judge had banished Vartanian to Courtroom #101, the domestic violence and order of protection sewer. Day in and day out, Little Greggy endured the mutual bickering, interrupting, and taunting of the pro se litigants once they’d elbowed their way through the crowd and up to the bench to speak their piece, ordered them to take off their hats, reminded them to call him Your Honor or Sir, and handed out the occasional thirty days for direct contempt, sentence suspended if an apology were immediately forthcoming from the contemnor. It was called keeping order, and it was starting to look like Little Greggy’s lifetime gig.

Vartanian hates this office.

Little Greggy hates everybody: me, you, the County Board chairwoman, not to mention his brothers and sisters on the bench. He has hatred in his guts. That’s what makes him the perfect choice. Nobody can cry favoritism. Plus, he’ll deny any motion my office puts before him, guaranteed. We don’t need a sympathetic judge, Taddy—quite the contrary: we need the most unsympathetic of judges, and that’s Little Greggy, hands down.

I’ll draft something.

Make it pretty. Lard it with plenty of citations of authority, so it looks like my office worked hard on it and is betting the farm on him granting it. That way, he won’t be able to resist summarily denying it.

I’ll get right to it.

And Taddy, we need some decisive movement on that Krystal Noah murder case. You need to get the lead out on that one. Doesn’t Rollie have a speedy trial demand on file?

Doesn’t he always? Don’t worry; we’re still in good shape.

But Cow wasn’t convinced. We’re not in good shape until we’ve got her convicted. That girl’s guilty as sin, so wrap it up quick. Find out exactly how many days we’ve got left on the one twenty, and get it tried. I don’t want us caught with our pants down on any speedy trial bullshit. It’d be political suicide. This other thing’s a lunch-hour job. Dictate something, just knock it out and take it up with Little Greggy early this afternoon. That way he’ll deny it in time for the morning papers.

At 1:45 PM I toted two copies of my fourteen-page magnum opus to Courtroom #101, where Vartanian was refereeing an interspousal feud worthy of syndicated afternoon television. From the looks of things, the disorderly hearing had been going on for some time already. Having cut my teeth on similar cases when I first signed on with Cow, I could easily pick out the players: outraged cuckold husband, sympathetic good-ol’ boy neighbor at his side for moral support, outraged cuckold husband’s meddling mother, faithless wife, and faithless wife’s new teenage paramour. All were shouting at once, vying for the floor and the brass ear of Judge Vartanian, who looked like the before picture in an ad for Preparation H.

Lying whore—

—threatened to burn my house down with me in it—

—ain’t paying all them bills for her to be whoring—

Can I say something, Your Honor? Sir? Can I say something?

Ask her one thing. Ask her what she done with them kids with my son at work and her busy whoring with that high-school boyfriend a’ hers!

Judge Vartanian closed the court file and began to pronounce his decision.

This court’s paramount concern is the best interests of the children—

Whyn’tcha ask him the last time he bothered to lift a finger and gimme some help with them kids, then? Whyn’tcha ask him that?

This last interruption ignited Vartanian’s fabled slow burn.

Your Honor Sir, Faithless Wife added, too late.

Bailiff, Little Greggy began, deadly quiet. The Chief Judge’s diminutive nephew Philip Pfaith roused from near-slumber at the rear of the courtroom, smoothed out the wrinkles in his uniform, and strode forward with clinking handcuffs to stand before the bench. I edged closer, holding the special prosecutor motion to my chest like a mug shot placard, hoping to form as many negative associations as possible in Vartanian’s mind, the better to take a dive.

The dignity of the law must and shall be served, Vartanian intoned, training his baleful squint at Faithless, who by now was sniffling audibly and quavering at the upper lip. Where did you get the idea, madam, that you could come into this courtroom and interrupt a Circuit Judge?

No answer.

Who told you that it would be perfectly all right to shout out at the top of your lungs in open court whatever rude and hostile remarks popped into your head, even if by so doing you were to cut off a Circuit Judge in mid-sentence?

Still no answer. More sniveling.

No one, madam, and I mean no one, interrupts a Circuit Judge, especially when that Circuit Judge is in the midst of pronouncing his decision: a decision I might add that is sure to have far-reaching and long-lasting consequences with regard to the care, custody and welfare of your children.

Your Honor, Sir, all I meant was—

Quiet! Vartanian shouted in a voice so loud that even I started with its sudden force. I hereby find you in direct contempt of this Court and sentence you to thirty days’ confinement in the King Castle County Jail. Order of protection granted; temporary custody awarded to Petitioner; support and visitation reserved. Clerk to prepare an appropriate order. Next case.

I’m sorry, Sir. I’m so sorry, the woman wailed as Aphid Pfaith slapped the bracelets on her and began to lead her away. But Vartanian wasn’t hearing any apologies.

It looked like my lucky day.

Your Honor, I called out, just to be irritating, The People have an ex parte motion to present, may it please the Court.

Mr. Jobe, it can hardly have escaped your notice that I have a very full docket this afternoon. Is no one else free to hear your motion?

No one, Judge, I lied. In addition to which, the matter is of the utmost urgency. If you want to get Little Greggy mad, rush him. May I approach, Your Honor? I added, jabbing the motion in his direction as though serving a subpoena.

Vartanian stared at me, his mouth clamped in exasperation. He beckoned wearily and said, Bring it up here. He read the first page for about three minutes, and then looked at his watch and said, We’ll take this up in chambers. Five minute recess.

Vartanian’s chambers were spare, and cramped. There was nothing of a personal nature: no family pictures, golf trophies, framed sheepskins, commemorative plaques or potted plants. The man who spent his days confined here clearly was a man convinced he was destined for better things, choicer assignments. Or that his days were numbered.

He sat down behind his desk and picked up my motion.

What’s the matter with Cow these days? He getting too good for his job?

I hardly think so, Your Honor.

"You hardly think so. Then